Interact with Friends (in Real Life) with Facebook Monopoly

With Facebook: The Board Game, American graphic designer Pat C. Klein brings social media to the real world. The artist reinvented the most classic board game, Monopoly, by replacing houses, hotels, streets, Chance and Community Chest with the famous activities of Zuckerberg’s social network.

Klein’s goal is to get people to interact with each other in person, tackling the digital life and the web omnipresence. As he explains:

“As a young person living in the digital age, I feel as though the internet is affecting our ability to communicate with one another. Research done by Stanford University has indicated that social networking sites like Facebook can increase loneliness, depression and insecurity. Facebook: The Board Game was created as a response to this. The idea is that instead of engaging with Facebook on your computer or phone, you can arrange to meet up with friends, have a few drinks and play in real life”.

The result is a white and blue board where Jail was changed into Account Suspended, GO became Collect a free “like” card, Go to Jail turned into Forgot Log-in and Free Parking into Refresh Page. What about the game pieces? The game pieces are us!

So, when a player lands on Status he has to share good news or reveal future plans. The box Video forces to watch a video with somebody. Features like Events encourage to plan a gathering with another player.

Klein had fun adding a “sadistic” note to the game, with repercussions in real life. For instance, Unattended PC allows a player to reveal something embarrassing about the next person to leave the room, while Break Up forces people in relationship to break up. As they say: life is a game!